Chapter Three
A valet should be seen and not heard.
“Miggens, will you please cease that infernal racket,” Jack ordered, kicking his valet’s boots with his own immaculate hessians.
The snoring lessened but it did nothing to alleviate Jack’s crotchety disposition. Odd, as normally he felt as cheery as an escaped goose on Christmas Eve.
After all, why spend your days in melancholic stupor when you could be relishing life? He’d sought to speak with Byron about it once at Brooks’s, told him that although the poetry stuff was good, all those affected frowns and downcast lips would lead to an early death.
The chap hadn’t listened, of course, although that very night, he had commenced writing his celebrated poem about the passionate sable-curled Corsair.
Coincidence? Jack thought not.
Every poet needed a muse.
However, nigh on eight days cooped up in this carriage with a snoozing Oliver Miggens was enough to drive a rogue insane.
Despite purchasing the most sumptuous and laden Fortnum and Mason hamper, it had only sustained them for some thirty miles – excepting the suspicious jar of potted goose meat. Moreover, the weather had conspired against them too.
Warm and muggy, the heat languished in the air with nary a breeze, as though Mother Nature had just remembered she was into the ninth month of the year and sought to make up for the sodden summer before the deep freeze of winter.
Sighing, he leaned forward to view the landscape tumbling by. The sea’s proximity carried through the lowered window – saline and not a little whiffy – but nothing except bleak moorland stretched as far as the eye could see.
Still, that was an improvement on the scenery before their noon-day ale interlude, when the hedges had been so high ’twas as if they’d travelled at night, and the byway had thinned to a ribbon of dust, far too narrow for the carriage of a marquess.
Some rickety hay cart had then appeared in the conflicting direction and the backing up of horses, ensuing squabble as to who saw whom first and the Cornish fellow’s general discontentment over damn boshy, yes boshy London coaches had caused one’s humour to sour until vinegar.
Surely they were nearly there?
Jack had bid Sobers the coachman not to spare the horses and they’d made good time down to Cornwall, solely halting by day to swap prads and gobble pie. Miggens had complained of not having enough hours to starch his master’s attire to any semblance of perfection, but this infernal journey, in Jack’s view, required completion in as little time as possible.
Naturally, Miggens had travelled with an array of books to relieve the boredom – although the china clay tome had been readily forsaken in a bedside drawer of The Minerva Inn at Plymouth – but Jack didn’t have the patience for reading. He preferred doing.
Millie had hugged him hard upon his farewell, and he missed her warmth already, but if La Chauve-Souris was still alive and Miss Penrose’s memories could assist in any way, then the mission would be worthwhile.
Truth was, this new employment for the Crown suited him as he was aware a rogue could become aimless, no longer seducing for the pleasure but because it had become habit.
Not all his missions involved high society either. Forays into the Rookery and witnessing the silent misery of so many kept him mindful. Bruised women, crying children…memories.
How would this girl receive his attentions? No doubt the country miss would be rather dewy-eyed upon meeting a London marquess.
Miggens snuffled as the carriage lumped over yet another rut, and Jack wriggled, attempting to settle on a part of his anatomy that wasn’t bruised to hell.
Another benefit of this expedition to the wilderness was a rest from all those wedded couples. Obviously, he’d been only too pleased to assist the fellows in their romantic endeavours but nowadays, he felt a positive fifth wheel at their soirees.
This past summer, he’d noted them seating “suitable marchionesses” by his side at dinner and although they’d all been perfectly delightful, intelligent and witty, they were not for him.
No one was.
Years back, he’d attempted to feel…more, and he’d courted the diamond of the Season as his father had done before him, but although he’d appreciated her charms, he’d felt nothing within.
His breath had not quickened, his palms had not sweated and so he’d ended their courtship without so much as a backward glance.
The Winterbournes purely married for money, prestige or an heir – sometimes all three. Of course, one day he would have to find a bride for the continuation of the line, but it would be when the debauchery which dwelled within him had lessened with age.
Indeed, he was a Winterbourne in face and character – rascals, lechers, inconstant devils the lot of them.
The spit of his father…as his father would proudly say.
Besides, he was not unhappy with his lot. Who would be? He had wealth, privilege and a decent stash of a la mode waistcoats. And he loved cheering a miserable face, bringing forth a smile; it filled him with well-being and a sense of contentment that he’d never dared scrutinise further.
Unlike his own dear pater…and grand-pater…and all the previous Winterbournes stretching back to the original and lowly Sir Magnus Winterbourne, who’d been knighted by Elizabeth I for…services rendered, his only real rule was no innocents or married women. Just willing, experienced, unencumbered females who knew the rogue’s rules better than he did.
The snoring resumed with vigour so he prodded Miggens anew, beginning to think it a ploy.
No one could sleep in this infernal coffin of a carriage.
“Are you awake, Miggens?” he shouted above the pounding thud of hooves, rattle of wheels and the coachman’s ribald singing about Lucy and her cat. “My boots need polishing.”
One glaring eye opened, clear and green with no hint of bloodshot. That’s what happened when you rarely drank liquor. Indeed, no wrinkles whatsoever etched Miggens’s brow and he looked all of his twenty-four years.
“Bugger off, my lord,” the valet burbled before that eye snapped shut.
Tawny-haired and broad-shouldered, his valet really didn’t resemble a valet at all. In point of fact, a pugilist would be more fitting, but he vaguely recalled the chap’s mother who’d worked as a dairymaid on the estate – also tawny-haired and broad-shouldered.
“Well I never.” Jack shifted in his seat, glad at least to talk to someone, even if it was only fusty Miggens. “I doubt the Duke of Rakecombe has to put up with such insolence.”
“And I would doubt,” he murmured, keeping both eyes shut, “that the duke’s valet is obliged to remove scarlet garters from the bedchamber floor as a part of his duties.”
“How do you know what Rakecombe wears on his night off?”
Miggens allowed himself a puckered smirk and unfurled his arms to press upon the carriage roof. “If you do not approve of insolence, my lord, you could always replace me.”
Grinning, Jack stretched out his legs.
“Come now, Miggs, how could I dismiss my own half-brother? And remember, I liberated you from the Earl of Fowlmere’s service, a fellow so stingy he made you wash out his cundums. Would you care to go back?”
“Not particularly, my lord.”
“And stop bloody ‘my lording’ me. We’ve been through this.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Imbecile,” Jack muttered. “You take after Father.”
∞∞∞
“Whhooaaa.”
Their carriage creaked to an abrupt halt, flinging Jack forward and upending all of Miggens’s books to the floor. The valet himself hardly budged – must be all that brawn keeping him grounded like a granite boulder.
Jack thrust his head through the window. “Why have we stopped, my dear coachman, and where are we?”
“Weeellll…” It trailed off into a sucking of teeth.
Oh devil’s balls and witch’s thighs. “We’re lost, aren’t we, Sobers?”
Moreover, now he thought about it, that clump of thicket appeared vastly similar to a clump of thicket they’d passed not one half hour before.
Jumping down without waiting for the steps, Jack stretched his stiff muscles and perused the landscape. It wasn’t exactly how he’d imagined Cornwall to look. He had thought it all sheer cliffs and crashing waves but nothing more than heathland surrounded them, a few stunted ponies grazing in the distance.
Jack kicked his heels, causing a veil of dust to envelop his hessians.
“Could you possibly refrain, my lord, from soiling one’s boots,” Oliver Miggens protested as he clambered from the coach, rocking the entire equipage. “Cornish dust has proved particularly stubborn and there is only so much one can achieve with basic travel accoutrements.”
“And could you refrain, for just once, from being so stiff-rumped, Miggs. We have greater problems than my boots at this moment.”
The reply was a plenteous sniff that must have drawn air from Scotland.
“Why the devil didn’t you ask the driver of that cart we passed?” Jack grumbled as the coachman swigged something suspicious from a hip flask. No wonder they were lost; Sobers was soused.
“A man don’t ask fer directions. That’s fer skirts. We’re somewhere on Goonhilly Downs and if I jus’ follow south, I’m bound to hit the coast.”
“When?”
“An hour ago.”
Soundly disparaging Sobers’ occupational choice, Jack scrutinised all points of the compass for signs of Cornish folk, but not even a butterfly meandered past, and he was about to suggest they turn back when a billowing cloud began to form on the north horizon.
Coachman Sobers took another swig. “It’s a swarm of bees.”
“No, it’s a dust storm,” proclaimed Miggens. “A natural phenomenon in such dry weather. Fine particles are transported in suspension from one place to another via the wind without ever touching the ground.”
His half-brother clearly read too much for one so young.
Jack narrowed his gaze. “It’s a woman on horseback heading this way. She’ll be able to tell us where the hell we are.”
Indeed, she rode at full pelt towards them, and Jack lounged nonchalantly against the wheel, waiting for her to slow upon sighting their rested and crested carriage.
“She’s not slowing down,” observed Miggens with concern.
“Of course she will. Friendly lot, these country types. Always keen to assist.”
The hooves thundered, ground vibrating as she neared, dust swathing and rising in a maelstrom toward the blue sky.
“She’s not slowing down,” repeated Miggens.
No, she wasn’t. In fact, she looked primed to perform a last-ditch swerve around them. They’d be lost on Goonhilly Downs for eternity, their desiccated bodies found years from now, himself only recognisable by his ruby signet ring and hessian tassel. Death by countryside.
He threw out an arm.
“My lord, she’s not–”
He threw out both arms.
“It might be wise, my lor–”
He flung himself across her path; the horse reared, hooves flailing, and Jack stumbled back against their dust-clad coach, buckskins scuffing.
Taking the Lord’s name wholly in vain, he righted his waistcoat and glowered up at the panting animal as it pranced, set to give the rider an earful.
His eyes lit upon…
Well, he’d never seen the like.
Generous chocolate-coloured hair scattered down the woman’s back, tangled and sorely in need of a comb. A grey frayed dress, which required burning in his opinion, clad a shapeless form, and grime smothered her petticoats.
She looked to be past the first flush of girlhood – perhaps twenty-three or so, but the face…
Ravishing, the rake within him purred – high cheekbones, full lips, and although her skin was more tanned than fashion preferred, it suited her, wholesome and real. He couldn’t quite establish the colour of her eyes through the settling dust, but he could discern them glowering at him as though he were the devil incarnate.
She appeared as a wild creature, and he became aware of his gawp.
Rogues never gawped.
He pitched her one of his suave smiles – the disarming one that never failed to disarm and stepped forward. “Miss, I–”
The mare snorted, stamping its hooves, thick dust rising and casting his cream buckskins to fawn.
Prudently he stepped back. “You appear in somewhat of a hurry, Miss. Can I–”
“Oy! What you doing?”
Two more riders sped up to flank the woman, expressions fierce – which was laughable as they’d hardly a whisker to their chins, and were most probably grooms, judging by their horses and clothing.
Decidedly miffed, Jack presented them his marquess glare.
“I, my young fellow, was nearly trampled to death by your mistress’s appalling horsemanship.”
The woman’s lips parted, bosom heaving – not that he peered too closely, as he’d noticed a pistol strapped to her saddle.
“Who are you?” one of the grooms asked, blond hair sticking out willy-nilly and returning a rather impressive groom glare himself. “You don’t belong from round here.”
Insolent grammarian.
“I am the Marquess of Winterbourne. Who are you?”
“I be Benjamin Roskilly, and this here be Samuel Trescott.”
“Well, Benjamin,” he replied, raising an eyebrow at the woman, “you should inform your mistress of some manners. And she owes me a pair of remarkably expensive buckskins, cut from the king’s own deer no less.”
The words were meant for her to speak, to repudiate his patently absurd demand, but instead she pressed her lips mutinously closed, and before another word could be bandied by either party, the woman snapped her reins, the horse whirling on command.
She cantered off in the direction from whence she’d come, hair streaming like brown silk behind her.
“Who is your mistress, Benjamin?” he asked, twisting to the fresh-faced groom. “I’d like to know where to send my bill.”
“The lady is Miss Penrose, and you weren’t expected till the morrow. Back along by two miles be the turn for the manor.” A sudden grin broke the groom’s soft physog. “And a wink is as good as a nod to a blind hoss, my lord.”
With that nonsensical nonsense, both lads took off after the unruly Miss Penrose, and Jack stood watching their horses recede into the distance, dust clouds spiralling and merging once more.
“Well,” muttered Miggens, “you made an utter bumblebroth of that.”
“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” he murmured, brushing off his buckskins. “I may have to amend my approach, ’tis all.”
Miss Penrose, it appeared, was no timid girl. No one rode with such wildness, such wanton freedom if their true nature was reserved and wretched. She was no unassuming dove but a wild bird, unfettered and glorious. That pretty creature wouldn’t care if her hair became tangled in the throes of passion or her chemise ripped. He could imagine…
No. He would not imagine.
Rogues and innocents doth not mix.
He was simply here for a light woo.
A woo and withdraw, if you will.
His breath quickened. Maybe there was something to be said for fresh country air after all.